Chapter 12: In A World Full of Hidden Colors (V)

The memories that flashed before me spiraled into one focal point: Kousaka-san's defiant blue eyes.

That one glance felt like someone had shaken the snow globe I’d lived inside all my life. They were wide, shaking, yearning for answers I have long hidden from everyone, although she could see the boy I buried in the cabinet, the one still crying behind old masterpieces.

No matter how much I tried to deny it—our argument had rewritten the entire afternoon and the days that would come.

My hand gripped on the other half of the painting I once thought I could hide forever.

"Get...out."

She didn’t answer.

So I repeated it. Louder.

“I said get out! Get out of my apartment!"

Her eyes widened, but her feet stayed planted.

My grip tightened and the fragile material was crushed in the middle of my palm.

"I'm not leaving!"

Her arms were crossed now, as if to hold herself back from saying something cruel and true.

"This isn’t your business. Please comply while I'm still asking nicely.”

“Pardon my intrusion to your past, but it is my business now since you're still pretending that I wouldn't press myself into this important matter about you.”

I laughed bitterly.

“Oh, so you’re doing charity now? You save stray dogs and broken boys in your free time?”

“Don’t be stupid.”

“Don’t be cruel.”

“I’m not the one who shoved myself out in this decaying cabinet!”

“You only stayed because of the issue. You'll just consider this another day if it weren't for this.”

“Isn't that the issue? That you’ll keep on enduring that pain and expect it to go away? It doesn’t work like that, and now, someone has to fix this, and too bad, that someone is me!”

“No, Kousaka-san. No one has to. But you chose to because you wanted to see how far I’d fall.”

Her brow twitched.

“You think I’m enjoying this?”

“Isn’t that what this is? Schadenfreude? Watching the loner unravel? See if he screams when you poke enough?”

“You really think I’m that sick?”

“I think you’re exactly like the rest.” I pointed at her. My hand was trembling. “People that are curious and addicted to tragedy. Just close enough to see the mess, far enough not to be part of it.”

Her face twisted—offended, hurt, maybe both.

“You think suffering belongs to you alone?” Her voice was rising. “Like you’re the only one bleeding under your skin?”

I barked a dry laugh.

“And you think you understand me?”

“No,” she snapped. “But I understand what it feels like to scream in silence.”

That hit me.

But I couldn’t let it in.

“Don’t pretend your sob story matches mine.”

“I’m not matching. I’m telling you because you think that you're the only one who was left behind.”

Her voice cracked then.

And I saw something in her expression that silenced me.

“I was thirteen when they gave up on me,” she said. “When they decided my depression, my isolation, my failure to be palatable was too much. I was always absent from school. I was nowhere on family occasions. I couldn’t smile enough for his company dinners.”

I blinked, the words not quite registering. I didn’t know what to say about this glimpse on her life because it really felt like stepping into a far more dangerous territory than mine.

“I became inconvenient. They sent me here like some defective package.”

Her chest heaved.

“I wasn’t even allowed to cry about it. I wasn’t allowed to break. I had to smile in another language and live in a place that never felt like mine.”

Tears shimmered in her eyes—but didn’t fall.

“So no, I don’t know exactly what you’re feeling, Shimizu. But don’t you dare say I don’t know what it’s like to be abandoned.”

Something inside me cracked.

I didn’t know what part.

And seeing her devastated and vulnerable after knowing what led her to a country far from home, it made me realize that I had no right to be vicious to her.

My anger dialed down on its own. My breathing steadied out, my shoulders slumped, and all the tension drained out of me.

I was finally relaxed.

“...I’m sorry, Kousaka-san. For everything.”

“I’m not here because I like watching people suffer. I’m here because I know what it feels like when no one stays.”

She had spoken too much. I had said too little. My tears had already dried up, but the intensity of emotions remained.

“So tell me why," she begged. "Tell me what really happened. Why would someone with this much talent live like this? Why are you alone? Why do you treat yourself like you’re disposable?"

"You wouldn’t understand."

"Try me. Damn it, try me!"

I turned my back and leaned on the window.

“My mother was supposed to be the artist,” I said, each word hitting like a hammer to my ribs. "She was great, like everyone said. But she gave it up when she got married and had me."

I swallowed, but it burned going down.

“I picked up a brush when I was six. By the time I was eight, people forgot she existed.”

Kousaka-san didn’t speak. She was listening.

And I’m glad that she did.

“The praise went to me. They called me an ‘art savant’.”

I spat the word like venom, and her mouth slightly gaped apologetically.

“She pretended to smile. But I could see resentment and envy in her eyes. Every time someone praised me, it killed something in her. By the time I realized it, she had already stopped painting and talking to me.”

My breathing grew erratic. The words were tumbling too fast now.

"She started locking herself in the bathroom with smoke and beer for hours. And it felt like I was stealing something from her just by existing."

I wiped my face with the back of my hand and realized I was crying again.

“Shimizu—”

I can feel the warmth of her hand on my shoulder.

“I was eleven,” my voice shook. “when my mother found my portrait of her and cried like it stabbed her. When she bled onto the floor. I didn’t know if it was her body or her spirit that tore first.”

I turned around and stared at the broken canvas beside Kousaka-san’s frame.

“She lost the baby. I lost the family.”

Her lips parted.

But no sound came.

I kept going.

“My father told me that if I loved her, I would’ve stopped painting. That I would’ve shut up and thrown it all away.”

“Did you?”

I looked at her.

“I did. I threw away the one thing that made me feel like I mattered. And it still wasn’t enough. They left anyway.”

“You think I didn’t want to disappear too? You think I didn’t stare at the ceiling for nights, wondering if it would be easier if I didn’t exist at all?”

“Then why are you still here?”

“Because someone had to be.”

“No one has to be anything, Kousaka-san. We’re condemned to be free, right?”

She nodded in understanding.

“Then why are you still here?”

“Because I sell dango.”

She blinked.

“What?”

“Because I sell dango,” I repeated. “It's the one thing I can make that won’t break and ask me to remember what I was before everything fell apart.”

She stared at me like I was someone she didn’t know.

I was.

I didn’t know myself anymore either.

“Who told you it was your fault?” she asked.

I didn’t answer.

She took another step, enough to enter the personal space I always kept out of reach. I had no space to retreat, and my back was pressed against the windowsills.

“Your parents abandoned you. That was their sin, not yours.”

I turned away, feeling the heat of my cheeks due to our proximity.

I can hear and detect the rosy scent of her breaths, and that alone made me question the prudence I should've been exercising.

“No. It was mine. I was the one who kept painting. I was the one who smiled when she cried. I was the one who existed.”

A pause.

“…Someone I loved died beside me, too.” she admitted, words soft and bitter.

Silence stretched like a blade being unsheathed between us, making me reflect on the situation we're currently in.

She wasn’t crying at all, but I knew better. I’d seen it a thousand times before—people who can't cry in front of others. This is especially present to men where they are always supposed to just ‘suck it up’.

Some wore faces that didn't know the feeling of tears, but never stopped if they broke.

We’re as fragile as spun glass when we're not around people.

People are masters of wearing masks and running away from their emotions, no matter how deep or raw.

“Died? Who?”

And that measured silence told me everything.

We’re just left staring at each other and I found myself unable to turn away.

I've never seen Kousaka-san’s face this close. And we're never supposed to be this close.

This kind of proximity gave me a more detailed assessment of her features. Her hair wasn’t gold, but a thousand warm shades of light blonde threaded together like sunlit strands.

Her nose was a perfect balance between Japanese flats and French points. Her lips, as pink as ever, might be as soft as cotton too.

And in those ocean-tinged eyes, I can see not the delinquent, but a girl with raw emotions, the broken, vulnerable Kousaka-san who never had the chance to express herself.

I craved warmth, and she needed a savior.

I can feel her face closing into me now, much to my disbelief. My body knew exactly what was about to happen without any further input.

And when she closed her eyes in surrender, I pulled her by the waist and did the same.

But I didn’t have time for anything else.

Because a knock slammed through the room like a gavel.

“Hello? Are you two done wrecking the building?”

Shit.

The landlady!

We jerked back from each other, leaving no room for further questions and I rushed to the door.

“Coming!”

I pulled the door clumsily, my breathing erratic and face burning with warmth and sweat.

“Some of my tenants are trying to live…uh…is it a bad time for a visit?”

Her eyes scanned my drenched shirt, the slight disarray of the apartment, and then shifted—straight to Kousaka-san, who was standing beside the mess of canvases, her face just as red as mine.

She blinked. Then slowly, her expression shifted.

“…Oh.”

Her lips curved in the most obnoxiously knowing smirk I’d ever seen.

“I’ll, uh, come back in five minutes. Or ten. Depending on how loud you guys are.”

“Wha—N-No, Mikoto-san! It’s not like that!” I panicked, voice cracking mid-sentence.

Kousaka-san spun around with a gasp and immediately turned away, clutching her sketchpad like it could shield her from the entire world.

“Wh-Why would you even say that?!”

The landlady grinned, clearly enjoying this too much.

“I’ve been young once, you know. I’m not judging. Just—try not to break my floorboards.”

“We're in the middle of an argument!”

“A sweaty argument? Right, that's strenuous!”

She winked.

WINKED.

And then she was gone—just like that—leaving the two of us in utter, paralyzing silence.

I didn’t even have the courage to close the door. This embarrassment is too much for my 16 year old heart.

“…You’re paying for the emotional damage,” she mumbled, still facing away from me.

“I didn’t even do anything.”

“You existed.”

“…Fair.”

And it looks like a fix is needed beyond us and the apartment.